Birth in the spiritual sense is limitation. It is to live identified with the finite. This indeed is bondage, the root of ignorance that identifies the self with the limited and finite body, surface personality of a brief life, the transient satisfactions of the vital, the flickerings of desires. That is how the Upanishads also saw it and called it avidya, not Vidya because it is not the state of oneness. Sri Aurobindo would also ask us to be free from limitation arising out of attachment leading to delusion, moha.
Later spirituality started identifying it with the fact of physical birth, perhaps because this bondage is most strongly experienced with the soul entering into and identifying with the physical body. So they wanted to do away with the cycle of birth and death itself but in trying to cut the Gordian knot they washed away the baby with the bath water. But here there is a work to do, there is a purpose in the great cycles of the march of mankind, a divine consummation of the soul’s chequered walk. That is the other side of the human evolutionary journey through the adventure of Time and Space that Sri Krishna points out when he speaks of lokasangrahartha and gives his own example. So to be free from identification with the limited and the finite and yet live in the world freely and with delight holding together Vidya, avidya and sambhuti, asambhuti is the great ideal.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
